Would he scold my wrong turn and tell me I was being naughty?

This here is a symbol of my demotion from hip mama to tragically dull matronly figure. Our new Honda Odyssey has stirred up more emotions in me than any car should ever be allowed. On the one hand it's a work of stunning genius with amazing detail paid to (almost) every need and convenience of today's family; on the other hand... well, it's a minivan. The love/hate struggle that I face with this car is just something I'm going to have to learn to embrace since it really is a damn fine automobile. The one complaint I have, other than the obvious negative image it denotes, is the unforgivable lack of automatic locking doors. Our CRV had them and I'm finding it very difficult to adjust to their absence. Just this morning I spent a good chunk of time stuck in the damn car because I couldn't figure out how to open the power sliding doors. This shouldn't be a hard task since Honda has provided me with 3 different ways of opening these doors. You've got the handle on the inside, the button on the key remote or the button inside the car next to the steering wheel. But none of these work if the doors are locked. Of course, this might seem obvious but I had assumed the doors were already unlocked because the Honda CRV, which was far less luxurious, had doors that automatically locked and unlocked when the car was turned on or off. You'd think that the Odyssey, which comes with a user's manual DVD for those of us who can't read I suppose, would include automatic locking doors. No such luck. But at least the heated seats were keeping my ass nice and warm as I struggled to find a way to open the side doors.

We had the option of purchasing the built-in navigation system with the van. Unfortunately you could only get the nav system if you also purchased the built-in DVD player and all this cost a small fortune. We could think of a lot of uses for the navigation but couldn't justify the DVD player. While David and I are all for unnecessary luxuries for ourselves we feel that relative deprivation makes for a healthy childhood for our kids. After all, what's a roadtrip without a game of license plate bingo or my favorite, pick a dirt spot on the side window then bob and weave your head to make it "fly" over trees or telephone wires. I'm not sure what that last one is called but I'm pretty sure my brother made it up during a particularly boring family road trip when we were kids. It's this kind of inventiveness that I don't want to deprive my children of by buying a DVD player for our car. At least that's what we'll tell them when they complain that they are the only kids on the whole block without a DVD player in the car.

Since the idea of a navigation system was already planted in our heads and, clearly the Odyssey was incomplete without one, we bought our own. I was actually a bit hesitant at first. After all, I have a cell phone and a husband who works in front of a computer all day. With one simple phone call to him he could pull up google maps and tell me exactly how to get to my destination. Now after using the new navigation for a few days I'm in love. The object of my affection even has a name: Emily. She speaks with a British accent and tells me exactly when and where to turn. I even find her mispronunciation of some of the Spanish street names around here endearing. If I decide to take my own detour she does not scold me; she simply recalculates the directions and does her bloody best to get me back on track. I need to check the manual to see if Emily has a male counterpart.